Press Clips Week 23-2018

Astronauts, Seeking Better Sleep, Change the Lights to Mimic the Sun

Light – both in its abundance and absence – is a crucial determinant in a person’s ability to sleep. And as we learn more and more about how to create better sleeping conditions, as well as improve those found in difficult settings, sleep researchers always consider how any changes will affect the circadian rhythm. As many people know, that rhythm serves as our internal clock, which is based on exposure to light that “tells” us when we should be awake or asleep.

In a typical 24-hour day, one’s circadian rhythm benefits from long stretches of daylight and darkness, which is good since long, interrupted sleep is the goal for good health and clear-headedness. But for many off-cycle people like, for example, night-shift workers, insomniacs and round-the-clock hospital physicians, there are serious challenges to getting a healthy sleeping stretch.

NASA and Northrop Grumman officials decided Friday to return a Pegasus rocket and its carrier aircraft from Hawaii to California, aborting a trip to Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean for next week’s scheduled launch of a NASA research satellite to conduct additional testing.

The return trip to California will postpone the launch of NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, known as ICON, indefinitely. Launch was scheduled for next Thursday, June 14, U.S. time.

“Northrop Grumman, working with NASA, has made the decision to postpone the June 14 launch of the Pegasus XL rocket, carrying the ICON spacecraft,” the company said in a statement. “The company will return Pegasus to Vandenberg Air Force Base to conduct testing of the rocket after off-nominal data was seen during the ferry flight.

Boulder-size Asteroid Disintegrated Harmlessly Over Africa

A boulder-size asteroid disintegrated harmlessly over Africa, just hours after its weekend discovery.

It’s only the third time scientists have spotted an incoming asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. The previous times were in 2008 and 2014.

The asteroid, dubbed 2018 LA, was discovered out near the moon’s orbit early Saturday morning, aiming straight for Earth. NASA reported the latest episode Sunday night. Asteroid trackers at NASA and elsewhere quickly determined the rock — about 6 feet across (2 meters) — was too small to pose any danger. It burned up in the Saturday evening sky over Botswana, eight hours after first being noticed.

Gateway Versus Tollbooth

As NASA plans to develop the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, one of the biggest challenges appears to be getting the name right.

In presentations at the International Space Development Conference recently in Los Angeles, NASA officials sometimes stumbled over the name, one calling it the “Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway” and another the “Lunar Outpost, uh, Platform, Platform-Gateway.” On some slides, it still showed up under its former, and perhaps more eloquent, moniker, the Deep Space Gateway. It’s little wonder, then, that it usually was called just the Gateway throughout the conference.

Senate appropriators offered a budget increase to the Federal Aviation Administration office that licenses commercial launches, while also calling on the office to streamline its regulatory processes.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved June 7 a spending bill for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. The appropriations subcommittee responsible for the bill favorably reported it without dissent at a markup two days earlier.

The bill provides $24.981 million for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST. That is an increase of nearly $2.4 million over what AST received in fiscal year 2018, and $3.4 million above the administration’s request. The House offered $24.917 million for AST in a bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee May 23.

Students will Launch Rockets to the Edge of Space for $1 Million Prize

One new rocket challenge is encouraging diversity and offering a staggering $1 million prize.

The Base 11 Space Challenge is a brand-new competition to encourage student-led university teams to design, build and launch their own rockets. This challenge aims to dramatically advance engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and increase representation of women and minorities, according to Base 11. Aside from the $1 million grand prize, students will also be able to win smaller prizes along the way.

Each team will work to create a liquid-propelled, single-stage rocket capable of achieving a 62-mile (100 kilometers) altitude with an ultimate deadline of Dec. 30, 2021.

Space Station could be Split to Aid Privatization, New NASA Chief Says

NASA is working on plans to commercialize the International Space Station, which currently costs up to $4 billion a year to maintain, the agency’s new administrator said on Wednesday.

Jim Bridenstine said the agency will consider “a range of options” to make private operation of the space station feasible. “Some of it might be that the I.S.S. wouldn’t exist in its current form,” he said. “But maybe it gets split into a number of different components. Some of it could be de-orbited.”

Mr. Bridenstine said no decision has been made, but that President Trump’s budget proposal in February put the agency’s privatization efforts “on steroids.”

Russia May Lack the Funds to Compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket

The Russian space program’s budget process is not particularly transparent to outsiders, but it does appear likely that Roscosmos will face cuts in the coming years. According to Sputnik, a Russian government-controlled news agency, the Roscosmos state corporation will likely to suffer funding shortages amounting to 150 billion rubles (more than $2 billion) in the next three years, from 2019 to 2021.

The consequences of these cuts could be severe for Russia’s much-vaunted launch industry. In particular, the reduced budget could forestall a rocket development project intended to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and a new super-heavy lift booster.

Bridenstine Upbeat on NASA’s Future as Pew Survey Underscores Public Support

Six weeks into his new job, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine fielded questions from reporters today about a variety of NASA programs and the agency’s future. By coincidence, the media roundtable took place the same day the Pew Research Center released a new survey of American opinions about NASA indicating the public is more interested in studying climate science than sending astronauts to the Moon or Mars, but continues to hold NASA in high esteem.

Much of the discussion focused on human spaceflight. Bridenstine said he is confident that commercial crew systems will be ready before NASA exhausts its access to Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but acknowledged NASA is assessing options like extending the duration of International Space Station (ISS) missions just in case.

Parabolic Flight Campaign – Three ‘Firsts’ in Partial Gravity

When the parabolic flight aircraft, the Airbus A310 ZERO-G, takes off from Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport on 5 June 2018, it will be a ‘first’ in several respects: for the first time, only life science experiments will be exposed to three very different gravity conditions during a joint campaign by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), the European Space Agency (ESA) and French space agency CNES (Centre national d’études spatiales; CNES). The idea of conducting a pure ‘life science campaign’ originated with the International Space Life Sciences Working Group (ISLSWG), an expert network at space agency level. This particular campaign includes a total of eight experiments – three of them from Germany – over three flight days. Also for the first time, a NASA life science experiment will be on board.

‘We Choose to Go to the Moon’ Again—But When?

The bumper stickers have made an appearance at many congressional hearings in the last several years.“2033: We can do this,” they say, affirming the year by which some hope humans will set foot on Mars. Lawmakers wave them in front of the scientists, space executives, astronauts in the room, the people they hope can make it happen.

But before nasa sends humans to Mars, it’s going to send them back to the moon, according to the Trump administration’s space policy. Just don’t expect any bumper stickers for that. At least not yet.

“Ultimately we want to have the ability to put humans on the surface of the moon,” Jim Bridenstine, the nasa administrator, said this week. “I don’t have a time frame for that at this point.”

Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Aims for One Year or More On-orbit Cygnus Lifetime

With Northrop Grumman’s acquisition of Orbital ATK complete, the newly-formed Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems will now be the division within Northrop Grumman responsible for all Cygnus missions to the International Space Station as well as the execution of the extended CRS1 and the upcoming CRS2 contracts. As part of those contracts, the company will continue its focus on offering Cygnus as a testbed for new technology demonstrations, just as past Cygnus missions have done.

The most notable use of Cygnus as a test bed for new technologies was the three part SAFFIRE (Spacecraft Fire Experiment) conducted over the OA-6, OA-5, and OA 7 missions. SAFFIRE saw Cygnus’ controllers deliberately ignite a fire inside a special containment module in the spacecraft’s pressurized cargo volume that contained material samples commonly found on the ISS as well as those under selection for NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

NASA Selects UNH Researchers for Mission to Study Safer Space Travel

NASA recently chose a team of experts to work on a new mission studying the outer solar system and safer space travel, and several University of New Hampshire researchers made the list.

The operation, called the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission, is scheduled to launch in 2024 and is expected to help researchers around the world better understand the global heliosphere — a bubble that surrounds and protects our solar system from dangerous radiation, said Nathan Schwadron, a UNH professor of physics and one of the mission’s deputy principal investigators.

Why Populating Mars Would be a Lot Trickier — and Ethically Questionable — than You Think

With several governmental institutions, such as NASA, China’s space program and the European Space Agency, showing interest in Mars, researchers at the University of Information Technology and Management in Poland wanted to outline the logistics of colonizing space that aren’t typically studied. The study published in the June issue of the journal Futures lays out a series of social challenges that future colonies might face in populating the red planet.

The paper suggests that colonies on Mars would have to completely change how they approach topics such as the value of life, morality, privacy and abortion.

Steven Abood, an American researcher on the project who previously studied the legal ramifications of genetic modification, said that if Mars becomes the last outpost for the survival of humankind, colonies will likely live like survivalists.

SpaceX’s BFR Factory in LA Spied with Four Falcon 9 Fairing Halves

In an unexpected turn of events, Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin came across a remarkable scene in Port of Los Angeles – four flight-proven Falcon 9 fairing halves temporarily stored on a plot of land soon to become SpaceX’s dedicated BFR factory.

While it’s difficult to guess exactly which fairing half is which, it appears that the halves from PAZ, Iridium-5, and Iridium-6 are present and accounted for. Reminiscent of SpaceX’s late-2016, early-2017 struggles with finding enough space to store their massive flight-proven Falcon 9 boosters, these fairing halves are unable to be reused as a consequence of too much saltwater exposure, making it significantly easier for the company to effectively find any old plot of SpaceX land on which to store them.

For the second time this year, Roscosmos launched three crewmembers towards the International Space Station. Soyuz Commander Sergei Prokopyev and fellow crewmembers Dr. Alexander Gerst and Dr. Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor launched on Soyuz MS-09 at 07:12 EDT (1112 UTC) on Wednesday, 6 June from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day rendezvous with the Station. The new crew will be joined on the Station by the first space-flying Artificial Intelligence robot, CIMON.

The ninth flight of the newly upgraded MS-series of the veteran Soyuz crew vehicle has been in build and integration operations for years, with final major preparations picking up in earnest on 4 May when the Soyuz MS-09 craft entered final radio systems testing.

On 20 May, the crew performed final Sokol launch and entry space suit fit checks and checkouts inside Soyuz MS-09. This was followed two days later on 22 May with the fueling of the spacecraft with propellant and compressed gases.

Virgin Orbit “months” away from first rocket launch. In an in-depth feature on Virgin Orbit, the company’s VP of special projects, Will Pomerantz, told Ars that the LauncherOne rocket is nearing completion. “We are getting pretty darn close,” Pomerantz said when Ars visited Virgin Orbit recently for a tour of the factory. “I’m always hesitant to put dates on it, because we’re always wrong, like everyone in the industry. But I think we’re months away.”

Not seeking a revolution … “As awesome a goal as it is to put humans on Mars—or SUVs on Mars, or send robots past Pluto—that’s not what we’re trying to do,” Pomerantz said. “We’re trying to do the simplest, cheapest vehicle that we think is commercially viable in the long run.” Even so, regular, low-cost access to desired orbits for small sats would be revolutionary, and this is underwriting a heated competition to develop new, smaller rockets.

Americans aren’t Sold on the Idea of Sending Astronauts Back to the Moon

Interest in the final frontier isn’t going anywhere.

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center surveyed more than 2,500 American adults, revealing that 70 percent of Americans believe it’s essential for the United States to be at the forefront of space exploration. However, when put up against some of NASA’s other initiatives, like keeping track of our changing climate, Americans believe that human space exploration should be taking a back seat.

In fact, of the nine ways people think NASA should be utilizing its resources, anything related to physically exploring space received very little attention. Only 19 percent of those surveyed think traveling to Mars should be a “top priority” and even fewer, at 13 percent, think sending astronauts back to the moon should be a top priority.

Here’s Where Our Space Program will Succeed – or Fail

There is a single line, buried on page 34 of the latest government report into Australia’s space industry. In a slice, it cuts through the dreams, hopes and ambitions of a nation that fill its pages.

To fund a small but effective space agency, a budget of $250 million a year is needed, the report says. A quarter of a billion dollars a year if we want this to work – minimum.

When Treasurer Scott Morrison announced the government would establish the Australian Space Agency on budget night, he allocated it a budget of $26 million, to be spent over four years. That’s almost the exact amount of funding Australia’s last stab at a space agency received. The Australian Space Office withered a few years later, a victim of chronic underfunding.

Earlier this year, a Silicon Valley start-up called Swarm Technologies used an Indian launch vehicle to place four experimental satellites in outer space. This was despite the U.S. Federal Communications Commission refusing Swarm a license on safety grounds. These ‘rogue satellites’ appear to be the first ever unauthorized commercial satellites in outer space. Douglas Loverro, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, is right to avow it is in the national security interest of the U.S. to encourage an innovative commercial space sector. However, this arresting incident raises several legal and policy issues that should be of interest to all those involved in the future utilization of outer space.

Putin Says Russia Needs to Return its Leadership in Space Exploration

Russia should make many steps forward to return its leading positions in space exploration, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his Q&A session on Thursday.

“These technologies are developing and they are developing very actively and are being commercialized very actively and in this sense we must make many steps forward, including with regard to the quality of satellites and the quality of equipment. We must return and firmly keep our competence and leadership in launches,” the Russian president said.

Russia has unique competences in space exploration: the world’s first artificial satellite was launched by the Soviet Union and the world’s first man in outer space Yuri Gagarin was our compatriot, Putin stressed.

EU Commission Shoots for Stars with Increased Space Budget

The European Commission said on Wednesday it planned to increase its budget for space programmes to 16 billion euros ($18.85 billion) between 2021 and 2027, aiming to consolidate the bloc’s role as a “space power”.

By hiking spending from 11.1 billion euros in the current budget and streamlining the EU’s space programmes, the executive Commission said it hoped to boost a sector already contributing to some 10 percent of economic output.

“(The budget) sends a strong signal that the European Union, Europe is a space power and intends to remain a space power for a long time,” said Elzbieta Bienkowska, the EU’s Industry Commissioner.

The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to add $110 million to the defense budget to speed up the development of a low Earth orbit constellation of military satellites.

The project, named Blackjack, is led by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. The Air Force views this program as a key vehicle to bring cutting-edge commercial space technology into the military. The Pentagon in fiscal year 2019 requested $15 million for the program. The Air Force additionally sought $50 million for Blackjack as part of its “unfunded requirements” list that the military services submit to Congress every year.

The SASC is going even further. “The committee notes that funding for a Blackjack on-orbit demonstration is the Air Force’s highest unfunded priority,” said the report that accompanies the committee markup of the National Defense Authorization Act — named the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019.

Air Force Space Command is being relieved of the responsibility of fighting hackers in cyberspace. The job now belongs to Air Combat Command. This move will “drive faster decisions as we fight by realigning the cyber operations and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions under the same command,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said in a statement on Thursday.

ACC is scheduled to assume cyber responsibilities this summer.

The realignment means Air Force Space Command will be able to focus entirely on “space superiority,” said the command’s leader Gen. Jay Raymond in a statement. “Integrating cyber operations and intelligence in cyber capabilities under one command is a significant step towards enhancing our warfighting capabilities to conduct multi-domain operations,” he said.

Lockheed Martin Wins Potential $928 Million Contract to Develop New Hypersonic Missile for the Air Force

The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $928 million contract April 18 to develop a new missile that will travel more than five times faster than the speed of sound to overcome enemy defenses.

Under the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, Lockheed Martin will develop the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW), a new air-launched weapon system. The company is working closely with the Air Force to finalize system requirements under the contract’s initial task order.

This is the first phase of a development program, with future phases progressing through design, flight test, initial production and deployment of the weapon system at early operational capability. The contract ceiling through early operational capability is $928 million.

The First Rocket Built for Space

A trivia question in the category of Space History: What was the first rocket designed and built specifically for spaceflight? The Soviet R-7 that delivered Sputnik 1 to orbit on October 4, 1957? No. The Jupiter-C that successfully launched America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, a few months later? Nope. Then surely it must be Germany’s V-2 missile, which reached the edge of space in vertical test flights during World War 2, and reached even greater heights over American deserts in the late 1940s.

No, wrong again.

All of these were designed originally as weapons of war. A close look at the historical record reveals that it was the lesser known Viking—originally built strictly as a “sounding rocket” for upper atmospheric research—that was the world’s first custom custom-made space launcher.

Woman Suing NASA to Make Sure She can Keep Vial of Moon Dust from Neil Armstrong

Laura Murray Cicco has a piece of space from the first man to land on the moon. She wants to make sure she can keep it, so she proactively filed a suit against NASA as the agency’s position is that all lunar material belongs to it.

Murray Cicco received the small glass vial full of gray moon dust in the early 1970s. The vial came with a note: “To Laura Ann Murray — Best of luck — Neil Armstron Apollo 11.”

As a child, Murray Cicco learned about Neil Armstrong and that the famous astronaut was a friend of her father’s. Murray Cicco’s father was a pilot during World War II who trained pilots for the B-17 Flying Fortress, a court document detailing the lawsuit says. After his astronaut career, Armstrong taught at the University of Cincinnati in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. This is where, the suit says, paths of Armstrong and Murray-Cicco’s father crossed.

First trailer for ‘First Man’ launches Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong

Universal Pictures has released a first look at “First Man.” The studio on Friday (June 8) posted its first trailer for “First Man,” director Damien Chazelle’s feature film starring actor Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

“A visceral, first-person account, based on the book by James Hansen, the movie will explore the sacrifices and the cost – on Armstrong and on the nation – of one of the most dangerous missions in history,” reads the movie’s official website.

The trailer sets up the film’s focus on Armstrong, his years as a research test pilot and then as an astronaut, building up to what the movie’s tagline describes as the “impossible journey to the moon.” In July 1969, Armstrong commanded Apollo 11, NASA’s first mission to land humans on the moon.

Why Cosmonauts Pee on the Bus That Picks Them Up for Launches

The three-person Expedition 56/57 crew launched into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan this morning (June 6). On their way to the rocket, the crew — or at least Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev — did something odd: Reportedly, as in the past, the bus transporting them would stop, and the male crewmembers will urinate on the back-right tire of their ride.

Why? Apparently, they were paying tribute to the first human in space — Yuri Gagarin. The cosmonaut, who launched April 12, 1961, from the same cosmodrome, had to “go” on the way to the rocket … and the rest is history.

How can You Drink Champagne in Zero-G? Winemaker Builds a Bottle to Find Out

Will future spacefliers be able to drink a bit of celebratory bubbly in zero gravity? Leave it to a French winemaker to find out, using some out-of-the-box engineering.

Past studies have shown that carbonated beverages, ranging from soda pop to beer and wine, can turn into a sticky, gassy mess in microgravity. In a Quora Q&A, NASA engineer Robert Frost described the problems that were encountered when astronauts tried to quaff carbonated cola drinks aboard the space shuttle in the 1980s and 1990s:

“Soda in space is a bit problematic. In microgravity, the light gas bubbles won’t rush to the top of the liquid and escape. They will stay within the liquid. This means the astronaut will consume significantly more gas drinking a soda in space than one would drinking a soda on the ground. Drinking a carbonated beverage could be like drinking a foamy slurp.”

ESA Astronaut Pedro Duque Appointed to New Spanish Government

The new Spanish Prime Minister has announced his intention to appoint Spanish ESA astronaut Pedro Duque as Minister for Science, Innovation and Universities.

“It is a great privilege to be able to transfer my experience as an astronaut, project manager and space sector CEO to my new role in the government,” says Duque. “I am looking forward to increasing awareness in science and technology among Spanish citizens.”

Duque became the first Spanish citizen in space, when he was launched on the Space Shuttle Discovery for STS-95 mission from 29 October to 7 November 1998. The nine-day mission was dedicated to research in weightlessness and the study of the Sun. Pedro was responsible for the five ESA scientific facilities and for the computer system on the Space Shuttle.

But Kazakhstan isn’t known for its space program. So why does the country have a large space facility known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome? And why are American and European space explorers launching from that site? It turns out, there’s an intriguing backstory.

The Last NASA Scientist to Work on Nazi Rockets Has Died

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that the rocket scientist Georg von Tiesenhausen had died at his Alabama home at the age of 104. Von Tiesenhausen was the last living NASA scientist to have worked on Nazi rockets after being brought to the US as part of the secretive Operation Paperclip.

Von Tiesenhausen, known as “Von T” by those close to him, dedicated his life to rocket science. When Niel Armstrong presented him with the US Space and Rocket Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, he described von Tiesenhausen as “one of those rare individuals who has a natural ability to inform and inspire, to educate and motivate, and most remarkably, to endure.” During his decades-long career with NASA, von Tiesenhausen worked on the platform that moved the massive Saturn V rocket used to carry the first men to the moon to its launch pad. However he is perhaps best known for his conceptual design of the lunar rover that was used on the last three crewed Apollo missions to the moon.

NTSB Releases Preliminary Report on Fatal Tesla Crash on Autopilot

A fatal accident involving a Tesla Model X on Autopilot came under investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in March.

The NTSB has now released its preliminary report of the accident. After the accident, which took the life of the driver, had gathered a lot of media attention and scrutiny from the NTSB, Tesla released a detailed report of what it thought happened based on the vehicle’s data logs.

The NTSB corroborated the sequences of events leading to the crash with its own review of the recorded performance data:

Quality Assurance for Space Projects

26 – 29 June 2018 – Athlone, Ireland

The course is designed to provide the participant with an understanding of basic principles of Quality Management, Quality Assurance and Quality Control, as they are usually applied to space projects. You will find the full description of the course in the IAASS Professional Training Courses Catalog (download from the right bar on this page). Please register for attendance at the course by sending a completed Space Quality Assurance June 2018 – Booking Form to Catherine Lenehan by e-mail: catherine.lenehan@gltechnology.ie

10th IAASS Conference

15 – 17 May 2019 – Los Angeles, USA

The tenth IAASS Conference “Making Safety Happen” is an invitation to reflect and exchange information on a number of topics in space safety and sustainability of national and international interest. The conference is also a forum to promote mutual understanding, trust, and the widest possible international cooperation in such matters. The once exclusive “club” of nations with autonomous space access capabilities is becoming crowded with fresh, and ambitious new entrants. New commercial spaceports and near-spaceports are in operations and others are being built.